The Invaderz Return….

Okay so The Invaderz never actually went away. But their label did… For the best part of 10 years.

Launched in 2000 and running for 16 releases from The Invaderz themselves plus key cuts from the likes of Jubei, Total Science and Break, Invaderz Transmissions operated for nine years on a strict less-is-more / never-spam basis and would only ever peep over the bunker when the music was truly worth releasing. It ran until 2009 when they decided to focus on their own music and work with other labels, amassing a serious armoury of work on the likes of Commercial Suicide, DSCI4, Innerground and Soul:r

Besides a re-release of their 2001 Pivotal Entertainment release Feel Somebody / Echoes in 2015, the trio’s label Invaderz Transmissions has been dormant since 2009’s Jubei collaboration EP Tremor / Overload. Until now. Freshly rebranded to INV, the label now sports the entire back catalogue, all remastered, and launched last week with two brand new cuts from the boys themselves: Inside Of Me and F/Bag. Both rattling with that raw, loose and gritty underground funk the trio have incorporated into their signature over the last 15+ years, they’re an authentic label comeback statement: INV never went away, it was just biding its time and waiting for the right climate in which to operate again.

With many new independents rising over the last few years and drum & bass enjoying a healthy return to the underground melting pot, it’s the perfect time for The Invaderz to remind us of their own freestyle fusion. 2018 material is locked from the likes of Philth and Basic Forces and they’ve just launched a remix competition…

With full focus on the future and a whole stack of their own music to drop, we asked them a few questions to find out more…

Good to see the label back! What happened to cause such a long break? I’m going to guess it was the whole digital switch / recession thing…

Thank you! It’s good to be back! Yeah, it was partly to do with the internet thing but also when we got into making music we got into it because we liked making music. But it soon became all about tax returns, pressing plant drama and chasing money and everything but making music. We just didn’t want to be dedicating so much time to that when it was hard enough already with our personal lives finding time to do production. We had a chat with Dan over at Cygnus Music about it all as we are completely ignorant about how it all works in the modern digital era, and he made us feel confident about it again and convinced us now would be a good time to bring it back.

Was there anything in particular that triggered or inspired the re-launch now?

Well, we felt as though our lives weren’t stressful enough, so we decided to really spice it up with a bit of label drama! No seriously, we just had a big stockpile of unreleased tracks and after every Bassdrive show or gig I keep getting emailed and asked about release dates so it made sense we should let the people have access to the tracks.

Feeling the two tracks the label has re-launched with, too. They both have quite a classic, slightly Bristolian feel to them. Raw and funky. Tell me about them…

You know, when we make music we just go with the vibe. If you look at our back catalogue we do pretty much every sub-genre of drum & bass so whatever happens that day is what happens. We chose those tracks as the first release because they both got pretty good DJ support from people like Randall, Total Science and Fabio and they are easy access dancefloor type tracks. We wanted to ease those people who aren’t familiar with us into it slowly. The deeper and more serious tracks are scheduled to come next year!

It’s an exciting time musically I think. A lot of different ideas and sounds merging. People seem more open-minded. What do you think?

I mean I guess for the overall masses it’s a good thing because diversity and variety will bring people who may not be into ‘conventional’ drum & bass to the scene but for me personally I keep hearing a lot of music that is being peddled as drum and bass and I don’t recognise it as that. I suppose a lot of it is subjective. There seems to be several parallel scenes all running in congruence and all labelling themselves as drum & bass but for me I don’t think some of them are.

Also feels like a good time for new or re-launched labels… Lots of artists setting up their own labels. Newer guys are shaking up the system a bit. Feeling this?

I think it’s cool if you are a producer with a track record who is making decent music to want to be in control of how it’s put out to the world. I am just a little tired of the overwhelming amount of second rate junk that pops up in my inbox because the internet has now made it so with zero overheads or quality control you can now have a label and put out 200 tracks a week if you so wish.

So what comes next? What does INV have in store for 2018?

We have a whole bunch of new music on the label and we are also re-releasing the entire back catalogue remastered. We have signed music from several new artists and some from already established artists that we are really excited about bringing, also got some collabs with people like Philth and Basic Forces in the schedule. We are also currently running a remix competition so if you get over to our Bandcamp you can see the details there!

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